Brian Daizen Victoria - Zen War Stories

Following the critically acclaimed Zen at War (1997), Brian Daizen Victoria here explores the intimate relationship between Japanese institutional Buddhism and militarism during the Second World War.

Victoria reveals for the first time, through examination of the wartime writings of the Japanese military itself, that the Zen schools view of life and death was deliberately incorporated into the militarys programme of spiritual education in order to develop a fanatical military spirit in both soldiers and civilians. Furthermore, it is shown that D. T. Suzuki, the most famous exponent of Zen in the West, was a wartime proponent of this Zen-inspired viewpoint which enabled Japanese soldiers to leave for the battlefield already resigned to death. Victoria takes us on to the naval battlefield in the company of warrior-monk and Rinzai Zen Master Nakajima Genj. We view the war in China through the eyes of a Buddhist military chaplain. The book also examines the relationship to Buddhism of Japans seven class-A war criminals, hung by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1948.

A highly controversial study, this book will be of interest not only to those studying the history of the period, but also to anyone concerned with the perennial question of the proper relationship between religion and state.

Brian Daizen Victoria is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Asian Studies, the University of Adelaide.

General Editors: Charles S. Prebish and Damien Keown

The RoutledgeCurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism Series is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies.

The Series is diverse in its focus, including historical studies, textual translations and commentaries, sociological investigations, bibliographic studies, and considerations of religious practice as an expression of Buddhisms integral religiosity. It also presents materials on modern intellectual historical studies, including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, critical context and in the light of current social issues. The series is expansive and imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist history. It is receptive to all research works that inform and advance our knowledge and understanding of the Buddhist tradition.

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ALTRUISM AND REALITY

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WOMEN IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BUDDHA

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THE RESONANCE OF EMPTINESS

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IMAGING WISDOM

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AMERICAN BUDDHISM

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PAIN AND ITS ENDING

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THE SOUND OF LIBERATING TRUTH

Edited by Sallie B. King and Paul O. Ingram

BUDDHIST THEOLOGY

Edited by Roger R. Jackson and John J. Makransky

EMPTINESS APPRAISED

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THE GLORIOUS DEEDS OF PURNA

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CONTEMPORARY BUDDHIST ETHICS

Edited by Damien Keown

INNOVATIVE BUDDHIST WOMEN

Edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo

TEACHING BUDDHISM IN THE WEST

Edited by V.S. Hori, R.P. Hayes and J.M. Shields

EMPTY VISION

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SELF, REALITY AND REASON IN TIBETAN PHILOSOPHY

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BUDDHIST PHENOMENOLOGY

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2003 Brian Daizen Victoria

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In late 1997 I published a book, Zen at War, that sent shock waves throughout Zen communities in the West, for it demonstrated that wartime Japanese Zen masters, almost to a man, had been fervent supporters of Japanese militarism. Moreover, these masters claimed the Buddha Dharma was itself synonymous with that militarism. What was especially disconcerting to some readers was the fact that many of those Japanese Zen masters who first introduced Zen to the West, especially in the postwar era, turned out to have been some of the strongest proponents of Japanese militarism, cloaking their support in the guise of such phrases as the unity of Zen and the sword.

I remember being deeply moved by one reader whose pained reaction was posted on the Internet. He said simply, What the hell went wrong? He went on to add that if my book had any failing, it was that while I had done a good job in revealing the wartime deeds and acts of Japans leading Zen figures, I had failed to interpret or explain what it all meant within the context of Buddhism as a whole; that is to say, is Zen, if not Buddhism, a totalitarian or fascist faith?

This book is meant to address, at least to some degree, the question of what went wrong. However, rather than using the survey approach that characterized my earlier book, each chapter in the present volume focuses on discrete events or personalities. Any disjunction between chapters resulting from this approach will hopefully be compensated for by the opportunity to take a more in-depth look at the material. In any event, I have tried to include sufficient background information in each chapter so that the reader will find it unnecessary to have read Zen at War in order to make sense of what is presented here: each book stands by itself, although, taken together, they give a much broader and deeper picture than either of them does alone.

I caution readers that this book, especially its first part, is not intended as a description of the nature of Zen (or Buddhism as a whole) in any theoretical or abstract sense. Rather, it describes what a number of prominent Japanese Zen leaders believed or interpreted Zen to be, primarily in the 1930s and 1940s. On the other hand, material in the second part has a broader focus, showing that Buddhist support for Japanese militarism was by no means limited to the Zen school alone.